I vow to you: to give your beauty due
With all priority of man entranced
Not from a madness nor delusive cue
But depths where image still my pupils lanced.
A pedestal awaits yet need not sit
For you within the medal of my eyes
Are gold, sweet silver, bronze and all alit
So frames your portrait blended in my dyes.
But as I view in all a landscaped you
I fear the bleed of black onto this art
That I by mortal bond must still pursue
And from that clause of life shall writ us part-
But once obscured how shall I come to see
Without my light, no dawn is left for me.
(II)
How self absorbed to dwell upon my sight,
When you of beauty lush face greater fate:
Against a wrinkled army, time will fight!
No blessed war have won on angel's mate.
Take heart your sweetest smile shall time be fooled!
If he of eyes whose lens has borrowed mine
For mercy is a lover's queen that ruled
From youthful sight and all her states of shine
Yet I of eyes that yours command will do
Oh time's allegiance is to times alone!
And have your beauty taken out your due
To raise another on your sightly throne:
I worship none my sight has yet behold!
If onto age you go, then I be old.
(III)
Let not with haste and speed give years away:
My petalled rose has time yet withered not.
This poet's stead has yet fulfilled his say
To wonder if the angels dared forgot:
If ink has plight do pages white then gleam?
Then unto seers her beauty's cast be seen
From out the dye my muse be less a dream:
Immortal shall she be and not had been.
Yes! Fool am I who slandered truth of time;
Bestowing foe upon a famous clock
Who merely sought to gift a beauty's prime
Into the pages dust with worthy mock:
And laugh the age of ages from their book
She wrote her own but on my pen it took.
